Archive for the Films Category

Continuing my investigations, I recently spoke to two very kind archivists at White City. William Hammond and Phillip Birch are currently buried deep in the bowels of BBC head quarters digitising a wealth of old Radio programmes for posterity. After some intense cajoling they were persuaded to rummage through a cavernous hard drive of untold terabits to find and pass on this absolute gem of a recording.

The following sample is from a long forgotten staple of the BBC’s Home Service, Film Time. Originally airing in 1949, the quintessentially BBCish Mr Lewis discusses and (somewhat) favourably reviews Arthur Hayman’s Love’s Capture, a film he describes as a ‘challenging exploration of contemporary British mores’.

Despite the astronomical success of The Hayseed Chronicles after his death, for perennial nearly man Arthur Hayman it seemed defeat was fated to be the only thing he ever tasted. Hayman was a great popularist. Everything he did during his lifetime, be it his scripts, films or books, was made for the masses, but sadly, only enjoyed by the privileged few. It still troubles me that even his great magnum opi was dismissingly regarded in some obituaries as ‘obscure’.

I have been looking into his one foray as a director during the boom of the British Film Industry in the late 1940s, with the feature Love’s Capture (or more often, the misnomer, Love’s Captive). Somehow Gainsborough Studios managed to convince Phyllis Calvert (pictured) to star in this tale of the adulterous goings on in pre-war village life.

Having enjoyed Mary Webb’s now long out of print book of the same name, I’ve always been curious of how Hayman would have brought the story to life on the screen. All prints of the film have been lost to time and only a few bitter reviews remain, the brevity and curtness of which suggest few tears but my own will be shed over its quiet dissolution from history.

If anyone was lucky enough to have seen the original run in 1950, when it played a muted second fiddle to the more successful Gone to Earth, please get in touch.